A Final Hike In The Cordillera Region
Sagada delivers.
Good morning from The Rusty Nail in beautiful, mountain filled Sagada.
We awoke this morning feeling so refreshed. We slept a lot. A LOT after all of this hiking. We've both hiked here and there in the past, but not soaking wet from sweat for hour upon hour hiking. So good for you actually - and we slept like babies.
So what did we do? Got up and went for another hike! We were being picked up at "around 1pm" by our ol' buddy Stanley (we arranged this with him yesterday) to go back to Banaue to then catch our favorite thing in the world...an overnight bus back to Manila. (Dear lord help us.) We didn't want to venture back into town for exploring as we really already saw most of the small village, so we instead opted for a hike recommended by the Rusty Nail folks. A 45 minute hike brought us to this...
So beautiful. So peaceful. Only us and the views of the rice terraces and the extraordinary mountains. And the insanely yummy pineapple lassis.
The Rusty Nail served a handful of lassi flavors, but the pineapple ones were just toooo good. Like a Dole Whip on crack.
Back to the Rusty Nail and ready for our "around 1pm" pick up. 1:30...no Stanley. 1:45...no Stanley. Now 2pm and still no Stanley. I ask the lovely woman at the Rusty Nail to call the guy who set us up with Stanley and he tells us that we told Stanley we would make our own way to Banaue. Ummm...no we didn't. It was a very clear conversation...well, as clear a conversation with someone who's first, second or third language is probably not English. Oh boy...we need to be in Banaue for our 5pm overnight bus and we are currently in a town with no shuttles to Banaue until 5pm - and it's a one hour trip.
Hmmmmph.
The woman at Rusty Nail makes a few phone calls and tells us there is an overnight bus to Manila leaving from Sagada at 3:30pm and they will pick us up at the Rusty Nail. And then it's about twelve hours to Manila. We sacrificed our other overnight bus tickets and jumped at the new bus option - we couldn't miss our flight to Hong Kong afterall. And this was costing about $25 each. Done and done.
The bus shows up. It's MUCH nicer than the one we took up here. No one sitting in the AISLE overnight. Let's see how this goes...one Stilnox each and off we go...
